Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
(Thread IKs: symbolic)
 
  • Post
  • Reply
GateOfD
Jan 31, 2023

by Fluffdaddy

(and can't post for 26 days!)

how about studio DEEN

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Pan Dulce
Jan 4, 2011

Beautiful cinnamon roll too good for this world, too pure



chumbler posted:

I watched Tiny Senpai. She is both tiny and a senpai.

Tiny Senpai is basically



I mean... a tiny woman to a bigger man, with a curvy body, who coincidentally acts like a cat? Come on, be a little subtle.

Waffleman_
Jan 20, 2011


I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna!!!

Pan Dulce posted:

Tiny Senpai is basically



I mean... a tiny woman to a bigger man, with a curvy body, who coincidentally acts like a cat? Come on, be a little subtle.

I saw the trailer and it just seemed like the tiny kouhai show but way skeezier

The Colonel
Jun 8, 2013


I commute by bike!
these writers are writing stories about women who like men... and i'm going to make them pay.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

The Colonel posted:

these writers are writing stories about women who like men...
Likely the worst thing to happen to anime since I saw the Devil Hunter Yohko VHS at Sam Goody

FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jul 2, 2023

Electric Phantasm
Apr 7, 2011

YOSPOS

Maybe instead of thinking the lady is tiny we should think the man is just big.

Kwyndig
Sep 23, 2006

Heeeeeey


I think I'm just going to watch a few shows this season, catch up on horimya (I dropped off around episode 5), watch JJK2, Ryza, I don't know what else, maybe catch a few PVs and then decide from there.

studio mujahideen
May 3, 2005

its not even really a fetish, it was just two normal people flirting in a really boring way

GateOfD
Jan 31, 2023

by Fluffdaddy

(and can't post for 26 days!)

how many grail wars is gilgamesh gonna take part in, he should really win one, he's pretty much a vet. at this

marumaru
May 20, 2013



studio mujahideen posted:

its not even really a fetish, it was just two normal people flirting in a really boring way

so many romance anime are that though

Lt. Lizard
Apr 28, 2013

GateOfD posted:

how many grail wars is gilgamesh gonna take part in, he should really win one, he's pretty much a vet. at this

Yeah, having Gilgamesh in your variation of Holy Grail is basically the "Daring Today, Aren't We" Spongebob meme of Fate franchise. At this point, he has been around more than Saber (even counting all the "looks exactly like Saber, but it's not really Saber" cases. :v:)

chumbler
Mar 28, 2010

The people love Gil.

haypliss
Oct 2, 2022
At least this time he's there to hang out with his boyfriend (first appearance).

studio mujahideen
May 3, 2005

fsf gil is having a good time. has master he likes, gets to go on a date in the desert with someone. he deserves it

GateOfD
Jan 31, 2023

by Fluffdaddy

(and can't post for 26 days!)

managed to get down a few new seasonal episodes

Fate/Strange Fake: Seemed okay at first, but some of the faces seemed really off at times. Gil looks like a grandpa at moments. And the random j-rap song inserts was a weird choice. No idea if anymore are coming out or when. But 6/10.

Hori- Piece: Pretty good, kept and reminded me of the stuff I liked of the anime. Gonna keep watching just for the mini-stories 8/10

Tiny Senpai: pretty weak. The girl is okay, the guy is bland. The co-worker friends of the main duo are good. Much better romcoms out there. 4/10

Musohoku Tensei 00: Ready to keep going. Episode went by fast, surprised this didn't join the trend of hour long first episodes since this series had the habit of skipping both the intro and endings to squeeze a few more minutes of screen time each episode. 7/10

gonna try Ayaka ep1 a try later.

Strange Quark
Oct 15, 2012

I Failed At Anime 2022
Spring wrap-up, what I liked most to what I didn't:

Uma Musume: Pretty Derby - Road to the Top: Yeah, this is technically spring. I did not see S1, and S2 did not impress me, but I quite enjoyed this four-ep stint. My main issue with S2 was how often it would shift to focusing on a bunch of different characters in an already massive cast, making it difficult to remember who anyone was let alone why I should be invested in their struggles. Road to the Top thankfully keeps its focus narrow weaving the arcs of its three principal characters together for one clear narrative. The bump in animation quality outside the confines of a TV broadcast certaintly doesn't hurt.

Birdie Wing: Golf Girls' Story Season 2: While the shounen sports magic powers are fun enough, I can't help but be disappointed by how much of it ended up taking over this season, to the point that it makes the golf games rather meaningless to watch. Seeing the same stock footage over and over doesn't really hit the same as Eve finding an optimal golf trajectory by deliberately hitting through the trees with enough force to break off a solid branch. The soap opera family dynamics is the kind of thing I eat up, but it also feels like it never gets properly resolved, with the reveal of all the arranged marriage logistics and cheating being met with passive acceptance by our leads.

Opus.COLORs: Honestly, Opus's position here is more damning of what I've watched of this season than anything else, but hey, respect to the one place serving me food. I was really looking forward to this when it was first announced since I loved the staff's previous work in Starmyu (not season 3), but the show opens with a bloated cast, poorly explained premise, and character traits that felt drafted by a committee. It's like they tried to do something new and then fell back on a rejected Starmyu script when they couldn't come up with anything. Things pick up when they make the parents' deaths into its own pseudo-murder mystery, and while that doesn't really throw any surprises in how things resolves, it at least leads to the present-day conflict between the leads feeling a little more organic, albeit carried more by the voice actors than the writing. I can't say no to a little BL melodrama, especially if it's the only place I can get it this season.

World Dai Star: Happy to report we've beaten the allegations.



Anyway, this was perhaps my biggest disappointment of the season. I really loved the over the top effects accompanying the acting scenes in the first few episodes, with things like a character tossing her script into the air smoothly transitioning to the world literally freezing in place. I liked how our protagonist had her best friend hanging around in every scene that no one else ever addressed, but the show quickly drops the ball after making her ghostly entity as corporeal as everyone else and seemingly loses all interest in exploring the implications of why and how it happened. The rest of the cast only gets perfunctory development, leading to some real stinkers in the middle of the show. It does pick up a bit for the finale, but I just can't let go of what things could have been.

The IDOLM@STER Cinderella Girls: U149: Yeah, this is basically what I'd expect out of im@s anime drama, except the girls have 90% the same issues (lonely because parents busy) and nothing much happens because we can't let children have real issues. Top notch animation, but I am unfortunately at war with the sakuga heads. And worst of all, they never told me what says "I'm home" even though it's leaving!!!

"Oshi no Ko": I really dislike the pretentious teen vibe of this show, especially with Aqua at the helm. The whole thing comes off like it's pretending it's better than the entertaintment industry that ruins people's lives all the while taking full participation in the system without any contemplation of any alternatives. Aqua himself, cringe monologues aside, is overly centralizing as the protagonist. He obviously doesn't give a poo poo about acting since it's just a vehicle for his incredibly inefficient murder mystery sleuthing, but he's still naturally gifted that it poses no problems and emotionally available enough to recognize when each vulnernable girl who comes across his path needs help. What's the takeaway here, that he has the power of perfect idol genes?

I'm dreading how this show's legacy will turn out in the popular discourse. It's already stolen Zombieland Saga's place as THE idol show exception that's good because it tears down the idol industry, even though it's wholly uncritical of our leads' passion for idols, to the point that it's explicitly stated that idols made their own lives worth living. The idol show you like is a celebration, you like idols.

Kizuna no Allele: Shows where absolutely nothing happens are a dime a dozen in idolwatch at this point, and normally I'd be kinder to something that does not actively offend me with its content. Kizuna Ai however might just be the most blatantly corporate and soulless anime I've ever seen even if it didn't try to push NFTs. It's almost impressive how much of a cashgrab it is while also fundamentally misunderstanding the appeal of what it's trying to cashgrab. I don't believe for a second that anyone on this project has any passion for the work. It has zero reason to exist. At least it's accurate to the source material I suppose.

YggdrasilTM
Nov 7, 2011

The original April Fools' joke Strange Fake is based on came out in 2009, before even Fate/Extra. At the time the whole Fate franchise was just Stay Night, Zero, and Ataraxia. There really weren't tat many other Grail Wars at the time.

The 7th Guest
Dec 17, 2003

i watched 1 episode of Yamada and 3 episodes of Skip & Loafer and they were both p good. then i forgot to watch anything else

GateOfD
Jan 31, 2023

by Fluffdaddy

(and can't post for 26 days!)

when is the title gonna be changed to summer, or is there gonna be a summer topic

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant
Summer thread is being worked on.

Yes_Cantaloupe
Feb 28, 2005

Strange Quark posted:

The idol show you like is a celebration, you like idols.

:yeah:

Julias
Jun 24, 2012

Strum in a harmonizing quartet
I want to cause a revolution

What can I do? My savage
nature is beyond wild
Summer thread is up

https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=4035682

Doodles
Apr 14, 2001
Now that I've watched the last Spring show for the season, time for a quick summary:

There were a couple of shows I watched just a few episodes of:

Kawaisugi Crisis - Id this had been a movie, it might have been better, but the joke gets old very quickly in this series. That the animation is perfunctory at best didn't help. Gave up after three episodes. At least the pets in the end credits were always nice to watch.

KonoSuba: An Explosion on This Wonderful World! - I'm not a fan of the base series, but I was hoping this would at least be fun because it's the character who's the least deserving of being saddled with the other three idiots in her party. Nope. Couldn't even make it past the first episode before I lost interest.

Of the ones I did complete:

Edomae Elf - I enjoyed this show far more than I expected to, with Elda the Otaku Elf being a joy to watch each week. Nothing earth shattering, just a nice little character-driven comedy that I wouldn't mind seeing more of.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Punch! - I liked this one as well, thought a little less than the first season, but it was still enjoyable to watch Yuna in her bear onesie tearing up baddies. Especially the final episode, where the bad guys were about as melodramatic as Snidely Whiplash on an ether bender.

Niehime to Kemono no Ou (Sacrificial Princess and the King of Beasts) - This one isn't technically finished, but at the halfway point I can say that while the animation and character designs leave something to be desired, the story of this reimagining of "Beauty & The Beast" is interesting, the acting is decent, and the backgrounds are gorgeous. Sticking with it to the end over the Summer.

Last, and anything but least Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury - Someone early in the specific thread for this show put it best (paraphrasing) "I didn't think that to get into Gundam would require an autistic lesbian tanuki girl, but here we are." Absolutely sublime, and while this story is done, I'd love to see a movie or OVA that covers a little bit of their present lives. Hell. I'd watch a show where these characters were just eating lunch. Thank gently caress i haven't the space to display gunpla, as I would probably go broke buying every single model for the show that's come out. Yes, even Shaddiq's suit.

On to Summer!

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009

Strange Quark posted:

"Oshi no Ko": I really dislike the pretentious teen vibe of this show, especially with Aqua at the helm. The whole thing comes off like it's pretending it's better than the entertaintment industry that ruins people's lives all the while taking full participation in the system without any contemplation of any alternatives. Aqua himself, cringe monologues aside, is overly centralizing as the protagonist. He obviously doesn't give a poo poo about acting since it's just a vehicle for his incredibly inefficient murder mystery sleuthing, but he's still naturally gifted that it poses no problems and emotionally available enough to recognize when each vulnernable girl who comes across his path needs help. What's the takeaway here, that he has the power of perfect idol genes?
he did acting even before the prologue was over, he genuinely likes acting

Big Leg
May 22, 2020

a corpse is talking

Endorph posted:

goddamn bang dream my go loving owns. i implore all of you to watch it. ep 1 opens with a band breaking up and then it and ep 2 are good slightly downbeat light high school drama + getting started with a band stuff but ep 3 is just an entire pov ep from the autistic-coded character. like the entire thing is just from their eyeline, you only see their face in mirrors/reflections and stuff. they place a lot of emphasis on them looking off to the side/down to the floor and the small moments where they do actually meet someones eyes and how much that means to them, the way noises and visuals around them sort of blur together but which ones stick out and why, leading up to the ep 1 opening scene from their perspective as the band breaks up. its some really inventive directing that really takes advantage of being a 3dcg show. highly recommend even if you arent familiar with bang dream.

only real caveat is they do a tiny bit of 'wow i love *band from previous season/the game*' but its like literally 3-4 lines and makes sense in universe, just slightly goofy.

alright i'm sold

Strange Quark
Oct 15, 2012

I Failed At Anime 2022

Endorph posted:

he did acting even before the prologue was over, he genuinely likes acting

I don't think the show got that across very clearly then because it seemed like he was pushed into it by matter of circumstance before it gets abandoned for ten years in the following hubbub with AI's passing.

Tabletops
Jan 27, 2014

anime
Caught up on insomniacs and it’s very cute. Pacing is great, art and animation is largely great. Musics good. Hope it gets another season.

Arist
Feb 13, 2012

who, me?


It's very clear. He keeps saying he stopped acting because he wasn't very good, but it's pretty blatantly an attempt to cope. There's a scene in like episode 2 or 3 where his director buddy prompts him to think about what he actually wants to do, and he thinks back to when Ai told him to pursue acting and he kind of intentionally avoids thinking about it further.

Strange Quark
Oct 15, 2012

I Failed At Anime 2022
I'll concede the point that Aqua definitely would be the type to lie to himself, but I guess the enthusiasm for acting is harder to see next to how saturated the setting is. Everyone in the main cast is some kind of performer as a matter of course, and there's not even a hint of anyone wanting to be anything else.

Maera Sior
Jan 5, 2012

Arist posted:

It's very clear. He keeps saying he stopped acting because he wasn't very good, but it's pretty blatantly an attempt to cope. There's a scene in like episode 2 or 3 where his director buddy prompts him to think about what he actually wants to do, and he thinks back to when Ai told him to pursue acting and he kind of intentionally avoids thinking about it further.

Also, given how blatantly he's disconnected from his current life at times, he's been spending a lot of time acting as the character he thinks everyone should see. He's not just naturally gifted at it, he's been practicing.

It seems pretty clear to me that he's deeply hosed up and Ai's death put a halt to any character growth. Ruby seems to have the healthier outlook.

Captain Invictus
Apr 5, 2005

Try reading some manga!


Clever Betty

Strange Quark posted:

I'll concede the point that Aqua definitely would be the type to lie to himself, but I guess the enthusiasm for acting is harder to see next to how saturated the setting is. Everyone in the main cast is some kind of performer as a matter of course, and there's not even a hint of anyone wanting to be anything else.
they're in an industry full of professional or aspiring entertainers of varying types, from actors to comedians to singers to vtubers. That's the focus of the series, aside from aqua's mission. They're not going to just have random pig farmers or whatever in the series focused around the entertainment industry. And these performers have all been doing it for most of their lives, there's not often going to be a sudden breakaway to an unrelated profession by them.

I'm not quite sure what you're expecting. It's like watching a mecha series and complaining about the prevalence of robots and their pilots.

Clarste
Apr 15, 2013

Just how many mistakes have you suffered on the way here?

An uncountable number, to be sure.
I think there's a valid criticism there, in that it's sort of like "wow, look how awful this industry is, but isn't it so glamorous too?" Having its cake and eating it too. But on the other hand I'm not really sure how you even have a story about the industry that doesn't address why people want to be in it.

Omnicrom
Aug 3, 2007
Snorlax Afficionado


Retrospective time! Oh boy! Had a number of drops this season, let me tell you all about them or something?

Dead Mount Death Play: I dropped this show and in hindsight I'm not 100% certain why? It was a remarkably stupid show that was kind of endearing because it knew exactly how stupid a show it was and didn't have a problem with it. As a longtime fan of Yu-Gi-Oh I have a great deal of respect for any production that knows it is complete nonsense on the face and is completely fine with that. And thus we have a reverse isekai show about a necromancer dude that frequently changes to a different animation style to poke fun at itself and clearly is just loving around and for some reason I just didn't want to watch it anymore. I think maybe it was the promise of an actual overarching plot that did it, I can't exactly point to any single one thing that led to this point but I eventually realized I just didn't really want to see where the show went when it got more, well "serious" is surely the wrong word but focused? Maybe? Whatever the reason was I just didn't really care to see more of these characters.

Ranking of Kings: Treasure Box of Courage: As the one weirdo in the thread who liked the back half of Ranking of Kings (except the midpoint of the penultimate episode) I thought I'd be really on board with more stories involving these characters in this world and I just wasn't. I dropped this after 2 episodes because it felt like a marked step down from the main series. Ranking of Kings was incredibly good at storytelling, did some very deft character work, and had some really good action and shot composition and this spinoff had very little of that. The whole thing just felt slapped together and that's really disappointing.

Gundam The Witch from Mercury Part 2: Absolutely ruled. Excellent show, superb Gundam entry, stunningly good cast, great action, amazing storytelling, strong plotting, smartly established world, gorgeous characterization, does some incredibly powerful things with how it runs its plots and progresses its story and themes, brilliant in drat near every way. I spent the entire show guessing and couldn't be happier for it. My biggest complaint is we never saw the wedding, and I very much look forward to seeing that wonderful autistic lesbian tanuki girl and her messed up family somewhere down the line in Super Robot Wars.

Pokemon Horizons: So this show isn't over by a long shot, but with a hiatus before the next part and leaving often a pretty good intermission point (and possibly getting a new title in Japan) it seems like it's worth bringing up in retrospect, and the retrospect I bring up is that this is pretty good. Say what you will about Pokémon one way or the other, it has done a better job consciously revising itself for a new generation than many other long-running kid named franchises. Talking completely irrespective of quality, the last few generations of Pokémon have experimented with setting, had interesting spinoffs spinoffs, played with the structures of their games, changed around what parts of the world they want to put forward, and ultimately broadened what kind of tone and themes they wanted to explore. The original Pokémon anime started shuffling stuff around a couple of years before it finally ended and Horizons stepped in pretty seamlessly to pick up the slack and tell a different, though not unfamiliar kind of story.

I say "not unfamiliar" because this is still Pokémon - this is still the same franchise about kids going on adventures with their cute animal buddies and exploring the world. Horizons has a larger ensemble cast with a different kind of dynamic and very different goals, at the same time it is recognizably the same setting with the same tone. I dig the way the show outlines the first steps of a pair of new trainers, and I also am amused that they have some adults on hand to have cool battles in a bit of having their cake and eating it too. I like that the show directly brings up the settings and concepts of the games even though the characters are moving orthogonal to them. I also just kind of dig the whole vibe of the show. There's a kind of Pixar thing here where the show works both as a kid's adventure series while also having a lot of stuff that's clearly there to be caught by adult fans without necessarily feeling pandering or getting in the way of the target demo. In a weird way it feels like a fine replacement for Digimon Ghost Game, even if it's nowhere near as nasty as that show usually was.

Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear Punch: I watched the first season of this and a chunk of this season and just dropped it because it turned into a slog. Not sure what to say other than I lost interest. I'm not going to claim the original series was particularly solid in its own right, but the season felt so light and fluffy it flew away. I wasn't sure where they could go from the ending of the first season, and as far as I'm concerned the answer was basically nowhere but slowly. So it goes.

Tokyo Mew Mew New Season 2: I would be way more excited about the series if the show in general could actually live up to the energy of the second season's opening which is a real hoot.

But to talk seriously I am surprised, in hindsight, with how much of this season was original material and how much more was updated and expanded from the original manga because Tokyo Mew Mew New FEELS like a magical girl anime from the early 00s. The whole thing definitely feels like a show that came out right after Sailor Moon was a big hit, and perhaps more importantly that came before Precure and Nanoha rewrote the genre's playbook. Season two introduces almost literally Tuxedo Mask and also very frustratingly uses him to indirectly bury the protagonists an awful lot in a way I can't really imagine happening on this side of Cure Black and Cure White having crazy acrobatic fistfights with evil muscle-y dudes. I wouldn't be opposed to his presence if he didn't do it in nearly every episode of this season, but he does so… On the other hand, nearly all of the new character episodes were genuinely great, and the finale was a huge improvement over the original manga in basically every way up to and including more faithfully capturing the themes of the series. Tokyo Mew Mew is now old enough to be nostalgic and it clearly had something of a fan base and I have to imagine they're probably pretty happy with this runback and you know what? Good for them.

Endorph
Jul 22, 2009

Strange Quark posted:

I don't think the show got that across very clearly then because it seemed like he was pushed into it by matter of circumstance before it gets abandoned for ten years in the following hubbub with AI's passing.

well the next arc is entirely about him actually liking acting

Strange Quark
Oct 15, 2012

I Failed At Anime 2022

Clarste posted:

I think there's a valid criticism there, in that it's sort of like "wow, look how awful this industry is, but isn't it so glamorous too?" Having its cake and eating it too. But on the other hand I'm not really sure how you even have a story about the industry that doesn't address why people want to be in it.

I find that most idol shows will have a character who's insecure or shy or just obviously not cut out to be an idol in some other fashion, and almost always the solution to when they're feeling down and dejected is to ganbarimasu harder instead of reevaluating what's important to them and maybe even just quitting. I actually liked the horse jockey show from a couple years back for this, where we had a guy whose build was not cut out for being a jockey, but he still tries to be one against his dad's advice. It ultimately ends in him acknowledging his physical limitations and dropping out, a downer that explicitly results in creating some distance with his friends. It's messy and more reflective of what happens in life.

The Black Stones
May 7, 2007

I POSTED WHAT NOW!?
Found a Gundam doujin about Mio and Suletta and so I bought it for kicks. I don’t know the story but there’s some kind of low stakes problem and Mio and Suletta kiss a bunch in it, and it ends with them kissing. I’m guessing the problem was why they didn’t kiss more.

Arc Hammer
Mar 4, 2013

Got any deathsticks?
Trigun Stampede: That was this season, right? Really liked the OP and the character animation was excellent. I enjoyed the focus on Vash and Knives relationship quite a bit. I do wish that we'd gotten more time with Legato and the show definitely leans more towards the drama side of Trigun than the adventure side. The last few episodes really got dour and grim, but overall I enjoyed it a good bit.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury: Really, really good show that comes so close to being a favourite of mine. The emotional beats land precisely where they mean to, the characters are excellent, the music and sound design is great and the mecha fights are top notch. But I can't love it. The last stretch of the second season could have really benefitted from even just two more episodes. As it stands, nothing in the episodes we got is really done poorly, but it definitely felt the show was racing to cram as much stuff in as they could before the deadline. As much as I liked the character beats, I can't shake that what we got is just a compromise due to time and production constraints. Still a good show, still worth a watch, but man that ending could done more for me.

Maera Sior
Jan 5, 2012

GWitch: Needed 2 more episodes, but I really can't complain. Enjoyable all around, have shoved it in the direction of people who don't touch Gundam.

Birdie Wing: How did they screw it up in the last 5 minutes? Very annoyed.

Demon Slayer: Generally looked bonkers good for being a weekly but oof, that pacing. I'm afraid for next season.

Vinland Saga: Why aren't you watching Vinland Saga? Amazing all around and managed the jump between studios just fine.

Golden Kamuy: Clearly suffered as a result of losing their art director and had a non-ending, but the adaptation is going to finish out and I'm really there for the ensemble cast.

Yuri Is My Job!: Came in late to this one. What's one step down from disaster lesbians? They need a therapist, or at least an adult. Unfortunately relatable even as I scream at them.

ETA: I knew I was missing something!

Oshi no ko: Kana is Best Girl and I want to see her succeed. Aqua needs some sense shaken into him. I guess Ruby exists.

Maera Sior fucked around with this message at 21:25 on Jul 3, 2023

Furnaceface
Oct 21, 2004




I watched all of Mashle yesterday. Its so stupid and weird and I loved every last second of it.

I couldnt get through Explosions, which makes me sad because Konosuba was the show that got me back into anime so I guess I expected a lot. Its not that it was bad, just... boring. :(

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Southern Cassowary
Jan 3, 2023

Fun season. Watched a bunch of stuff. Roughly in the order I liked it:

Gundam WfM: I agree with the criticisms that the pacing is all over the place and I think I'd have personally preferred more of a focus on the Earth/Space conflict rather than Permet/Gundam tech and maybe taking out a plot thread or two to tighten it up. Even so, this was consistently gripping and I was enthralled the entire season. What a great show.

Skip and Loafer: A cute slice-of-life with notably strong character writing. Just great, well-executed comfort food the entire time.

Oshi no Ko: Juggles a lot of plot threads to varying levels of execution. Sometimes it can feel a little hokey, but when it worked it worked really well. Akane, in particular, will stick with me for a while.

Yamada-kun: Reminded me of my WoW social guild from, gently caress, 14 years ago now. Cute and funny the entire run.

Heavenly Delusion: Even before the much discussed sexual assault scene and the poorly written fallout from that I think I was a little cooler than most on this. I was more into Kiruko and Maru exploring the apocalypse than the school plotline and how they tied the two plots together wasn't particularly interesting to me.

Insomniacs After School: A nice romance that could be a little dry at times. The arcade owner and the ed were the highlights of the show for me.

Birdie Wing: Birdie Wing always delivers exactly what's on the tin - shounen power levels with girls playing golf and a crazy, soap opera-esque world filled with familial reveals and mafia drama. It's entertaining but I think if it went much longer it'd have worn out its welcome.

Hell's Paradise: This was so close to being cool but it's bizarrely plotted, making it feel like barely anything happens until near the end. The final reveal that Gabimaru has probably been manipulated into imagining his current circumstances is interesting and I wish they'd gotten to it quicker so we could see the fallout from it.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply